Lunch Dates
by Arpad Hrunta
Summary: In 2021, Hermione and Draco connect over lunch in the Ministry canteen. For The Dramione Lounge-Wide FMK Challenge. Rated M for a little language.


_[Author's Note: This is for The Dramione Lounge-Wide FMK Challenge. We were to write a Draco/Hermione story, focusing on one or more of the Fornicate/Marry/Kill triad. Here's mine.]_

* * *

Lunch Dates

"Don't usually see you down here," a voice said to her. It was as patrician as ever, although the youthful sneering tone had been replaced by an adult complacency.

"I can't eat in my office while they're still fumigating the floor," she answered.

He set his tray down on the table, moving aside one of her books, and sat down in front of her.

"By all means, do sit down," Hermione said, not bothering to hide her irritation.

He waved his hand diffidently. "You think they'd give you a new office on another level. What is it, three weeks now since that charm down the hall went wild?"

"We don't have infinite space."

"See, we do, actually. Undetectable Extension Charms, you see."

"I like my office. A simple Bubble-Head Charm lets me work perfectly fine, Draco Malfoy, despite the fumes."

"And the smell?"

"Yes. But I can't eat very well in one, can I?"

"You just have to cast it right."

"I'm casting it perfectly fine, thank you!"

"Touchy, touchy, Weasley."

" _Granger_. It's still Granger."

Draco nodded. "Smart move, not taking their name. Family's as old as the hills, but they're like one of those magical pastes that just absorb everything around them. I swear, in three hundred years we'll all be Weasleys."

Hermione just glared at him. "I'm trying to work, here. Why are you in the Ministry canteen, anyway, Draco? Business with the Experimental Potions Committee again?"

"I was seeing Astoria off on her junket. She's the Floo Powder Marketing Board's representative on the Commodities Control Commission's trip to America. She's been working with them since Scorpius started at Hogwarts. Thought I'd stop by for lunch."

She raised an eyebrow. "Isn't this a little down-market for you?"

"Would you believe I like the pumpkin pie?" he asked, gesturing to his plate. "It's just like Hogwarts' used to be. Only thing I miss about that place, really."

"I rather liked it myself," she said, looking back at her papers.

"We had different experiences there."

"I'll say," Hermione said. "Look, I'm rather busy here, so if you don't mind..."

"What are you working on?"

"Economics."

"All of it?"

"I'm submitting a proposal."

"What on?"

"If I tell you, will you leave me alone?"

"I'll leave as soon as I'm finished my pie."

"I'm proposing that the Ministry take the Galleon off the gold standard to give us more control over our economy. I suspect it will go over like a lead balloon, but it will lay the groundwork for the next minister to be able to implement it and get us off this medieval economic system."

"Fun stuff."

"It's important we control our own economy."

"I couldn't agree more. Have fun, Granger," Draco said, waving his wand and sending his tray to the bussing station. He got up and left.

"Finally, some quiet," she muttered.

* * *

Three days later, he was back. This time he just sat down without an introduction.

"Back for more pie?" she said, irritated.

"Yes. And a proposal regarding my Experimental Potion 1268."

"The Ethereality Potion."

"You're aware of it."

"I like to know what's going on. It's a good idea..."

"Naturally."

She glowered at him, but couldn't help a little smirk as she continued. "... but they're going to want it heavily regulated. Just like Veritaserum. Don't want people walking through walls into secret chambers."

"Or the girls' loo."

"Draco!"

"Have a sense of humour, Granger. Still working on the proposal?"

"Yes."

"Have you talked to the Goblin Liaison Office?"

"They hate the idea. It would result in a decoupling of the Goblin Galleon from the Ministry Galleon."

"I can see why they would hate it. That might make it more attractive to the Wizengamot, though, keeping them separate. Might force us to have our own banking system rather than outsourcing it to the goblins."

"Outsourcing? Where did you hear that?"

"I read, Granger."

"But I thought only Muggles used that word."

"I can read Muggle, you know," he said, grinning at her.

"'I know you _can_. I just didn't think you would. And 'Muggle' isn't a language."

"Obviously. Look, I'm not that boy anymore, Granger," Draco said quietly. "Not after the war."

"None of us are who we were."

"No, we're not." They ate in silence for a while. "I have to go see the EPC. Enjoy your lunch."

She didn't mutter anything this time.

* * *

He was back the next day. "May I join you?"

She cleared her book. "How's the proposal to the Experimental Potions Committee going?"

"Better than I'd hoped, really. Probably be at it a few more days. How's the paper?"

"The Goblin Liaison Office has submitted a formal request to the Minister I set it aside. He's considering it. I'm going to continue it until I hear otherwise, though. It's a good proposal."

"It is. I've been reading about when the Muggles left the gold standard. No surprise they never went back."

"They did, once. Didn't help much, though."

"I'm sure you'll convince them, Granger."

She put her quill down. "For heaven's sake, Draco, I've known you for thirty years. Just call me 'Hermione'."

He broke into a full grin. "Didn't know it bothered you."

"It's this stupid public school crap. We're not in the army. You know my name, you've never stood on ceremony _ever_ with me, just call me 'Hermione'."

"By all means, _Hermione_. I suppose I should invite you to call me 'Draco'."

"I've always called you 'Draco'."

"Ah, but that was you presuming a level of intimacy you had no right to. Now that we've invited one another to use our given names, everything's proper again."

She smiled and shook her head. "Aristocrats."

"Proper breeding."

"Of course."

He grinned at her.

* * *

And so it continued, with them meeting for lunch every day in the canteen for a week. One day, when he sat down, Hemione said, "I'm surprised to see you here, Draco. The EPC approved your Ethereality Potion yesterday."

"I like the pie. Anyway, I heard they finally got the fumes off your floor. Why are you here?"

"The Minister says I'm not to be working on my proposal anymore. So I'm doing it on my spare time."

"Right."

"Yes."

"The Minister's an idiot, Hermione. It's a good proposal."

"You haven't even read it yet."

"Yet?"

"Everyone's going to have read it by the time I'm through."

"I have no doubt."

They talked about her proposal for a few minutes as they ate.

As he was finishing, he said quietly, "It's not just the pie, you know. I like the company. With Astoria gone so much, you're almost the only adult I have to talk to."

"Don't keep up with the old gang from school?"

His "No" was very deliberate. "They all either blame me for the Dark Lord, or worse, they won't give up the old prejudices. It's been over twenty years. I'd rather not relive the past. The past was terrible."

"You're not the old Draco Malfoy."

"No I'm not," he said in a furious whisper as he leaned in to her. "All that blood purity shite, you know what that got me? It got my family's estates almost dispossessed by the Ministry, my father in an early grave because of Azkaban and Voldemort's Cruciatus curses, my mother a grieving widow who can't get out of bed, made me into a murderer, and the only reason I'm not in Azkaban myself is because of the good word of my old school rival. It got me in a position so that the only woman who would look at me who wasn't outright _evil_ was a grasping social climber who dislikes me so much she's barely been home since Scorpius left for school four years ago, who is so vapid that I actually _do not care_ that she's shagging Blaise fucking Zabini, and who knows _who_ else, on the government's sickle in every high-end hotel in America!"

Hermione reached her hand out to touch Draco's arm. "Let's get you out of here," she said sympathetically.

Draco visibly pulled himself together and followed her to the Ministry elevators.

Once they got to her floor, she quickly cast a Bubble-Head Charm on each of them ("They say the danger's passed, but I'm not so sure", she explained) and they made their way down the corridor to her office. She scratched out a quick interdepartmental memo to her assistant ( _"Am in meeting w/ Draco Malfoy re: ramifications of EP1268. May be a few hours. Do Not Disturb. HG"_ ), waved her wand and watched as it folded itself into a paper airplane, and flew out the door into the hallway. Closing the door, she said, "Take my arm, Draco."

"What?"

"Just do it."

He did, and she Disapparated them.

* * *

They appeared in a side alley. As Draco recovered from the disorientation, she dispelled the Bubble-Head Charms.

"Where the hell are we?" he asked as he gathered his wits.

"King's Lynn."

"Why on earth are we here?"

"The wizarding population of this city numbers four, and they're all at work this time of day. You were distraught..."

"I was _not_ distraught!"

She looked at him like she did to Hugo when he was denying he had that last biscuit.

"I wasn't," Draco repeated.

"Well, you clearly need some time and space, and this is as good a place as any for some privacy. You also need a drink," she said. She transfigured their clothes to Muggle attire, and walked out of the alley into the street. He followed her.

She led them into a pub, ordered a pint of porter for each of them, and they sat down in a secluded private booth.

"I thought you couldn't Disapparate from the Ministry."

"You can if you know how," she said.

"You're not supposed to."

"Draco Malfoy, telling _me_ about the rules?" She laughed. "It's not like they're watching – there's not CCTV everywhere like there is out here among the Muggles. And I've asked not to be disturbed, so they won't know."

"You come here often?"

"I find it useful to know places I can go where I won't encounter other wizards or witches."

Draco raised an eyebrow.

"To get some piece and quiet and to _think!_ Honestly!" she said, throwing her hands in the air.

Draco had by this point managed to calm his features into impassivity. "You didn't need to drag me here. Unless you really needed a tipple, Granger."

"Don't do that."

"What?"

"Call me Granger. Or act like what just happened didn't."

"I don't know what you're..."

"Yes you _do_." She reached out a hand to his. "I'm sorry to hear about Astoria."

He shook his head. "It shouldn't matter."

"She's you're wife."

"It's what people do, right? They have affairs. They gallivant off to foreign continents with your old school chums." His voice broke. "It doesn't mean anything. It shouldn't mean anything."

She rubbed his hand silently.

"It _shouldn't_ matter. Nevermind that I'd _never_ have done this to her. Went and shagged Daphne or someone like that. I'd _never_ have betrayed her like this. She's not even _hiding!_ " His voice began to break. "What am I supposed to tell Scorpius? Because she not going to be able to hide it. She couldn't hide it from me, and he's even smarter than I am."

"Ron's going to leave me," she whispers.

"What?" Draco said.

"He doesn't know I know. But he's planning on leaving me. He's been having an affair with the owner of a robes shop in Diagon Alley for a few months now. Not even someone younger or prettier," she said, bitterness unavoidably creeping into her tone. "Just some boring woman a few years our senior. Nobody special at all. Just someone _else_. He doesn't think I've figured it out."

"He's a moron," Draco said, squeezing her hand. "He _is_ , Hermione. She is too. Astoria, I mean." He laughed, bitterly. "Look at us. I'm from a better family than her, I'm a good father, I'm a renowned Potion-Maker, I provide for her, I've given her nothing but love and attention, and she takes up with some poxy twit who's never going to amount to more than he is right now. And you! You're likely to be the next Minister, you're brilliant – even when I hated you, I could see that – by all accounts he'd be dead multiple times over without you, I _know_ you're a good mother, and you've been dead sexy since we were in Hogwarts. And our spouses are shagging other people. They're morons."

"Twits."

"First class idiots," he said, grinning.

"Fools, the both of them," she said, grinning back.

"Morons, I say."

She looked at him. "'Dead sexy'?"

He kept her gaze. "Yes. All that authority, that magic..."

She smiled. "That's what does it for you, Draco?"

"That and the hair."

Afterwards, she wasn't able to say who grabbed whom first, and who began kissing whom, but there they were, making out like two Hogwarts students, at a booth in some pub in the middle of King's Lynn. She hadn't kissed anyone like this since she and Ron were teenagers, and Draco was as eager as he was. His lips were on hers, his hands were in her hair, his tongue was in her mouth... rational thought had fled her brain, until she heard the barmaid clearing her throat. She stammered an apology and fished out some two pound coins, as Draco took her hand and they left the pub.

"Your place or mine," he said, breathlessly, kissing her again.

"What?" she asked in between kissing him back.

"Your place?" Kiss. "Or?" Kiss. "Mine?"

She didn't hesitate.

"Yours."

He led her into the alley and they disapparated.

* * *

When she was seventeen, she'd overheard Lavender and Parvati one night speculating what some of the boys would be like in bed. Hermione had done her best not to listen, not least of which because while she was intensely curious, she did not want to heard from Lavender how far she and Ron had gone. But she couldn't help hearing it anyway, and she recalled how Parvati, of all people, thought Draco would have been an excellent and caring lover ( _"You_ _know_ _he's the brooding and sensitive type, Lav!"_ ) while Lavender was convinced he'd be selfish and as fast as an overexcited jackrabbit.

Privately, she had thought Lavender was more likely to be right at the time.

Laying afterwards in Draco's arms, though, twenty-five years on, she thinks about that conversation. She'd never tell Parvati she had been right – oh _God_ she would never tell – but she had been. He'd been this weird mix of arrogance and an almost-out-of-character shyness, and had made a point of ensuring Hermione came before he did. He cuddled her in his arms afterwards, told her she was amazing, and said "Never done that before. Weasley's a moron" one last time before drifting to sleep. Eventually he started snoring. She extricated herself from his arms as he rolled away from her, and stared at the ceiling.

She'd never been with anyone other than Ron before. It was _nice_ , good heavens but it was satisfying, but she wasn't sure it was what she had wanted at all. Had she want to reduce herself to Ron's level? Wanted to make him suffer, by sleeping with a man who her husband, twenty-five years later, still thought of as the embodiment of everything wrong with the wizarding world, _knowing_ it would devastate him? Assuming he still cared of course. Or had she slept with Draco because he was handsome and charming and because he'd paid her attention at a time she was lonely, and shown an interest in her work, something Ron had never done? As revenge? As lust? As a seeking for a human connection?

She looks at the beams of the ceiling of Draco and Astoria's bedroom. She looks over at her robes in a pile on the floor. She looks the other way at Draco's sleeping back, breathing softly in and out.

She doesn't know whether she wants to leave right now, whether she wants to stay and part ways politely, or whether she wants to stay and fuck him and fuck him and fuck him and make love to him and heal the damage Ron and Astoria have done to them.

She's forty-two years old. She's no longer only been with one man. Her marriage is ending. Her home is empty most of the time. She feels physically satisfied but emotionally wrecked. She's paralyzed by indecision. Her options are terrifying.

She looks over at her robes as Draco snores on, rolling over towards her sleeping form, flopping his arm over her waist.

Outside, the autumn sun is setting.


End file.
